Many sports, such as soccer, rugby, basketball, baseball and tennis, amongst others, require the athlete to frequently change direction. This can cause significant stress to muscles, ligaments and tendons which can cause injuries over time. It is not uncommon for athletes to also suffer more traumatic injuries as a result of twisting an ankle beyond its normal range of movement.
A number of sports, such as soccer, golf, rugby, sprinting and cross country, amongst others, utilise footwear having spikes, studs or other means of improving traction. Properly fitting sports shoes do not allow the foot to substantially move within the shoe. This is essential to prevent minor injuries such as blisters which can negatively affect performance but can increase the risk of occurrence of more severe injuries due to increased traction related to spikes becoming embedded in the ground.
Treatment for lower limb injuries usually consists of applying a compression bandage to the injured area and resting. For many people, complete rest is not possible as they may need to work or they may have children to look after. It is often just not convenient to rest for long periods of time in order to recover from injury. Therefore, it is not uncommon for lower limb injuries to cause recurring pain and suffering due to more damage being caused by simply carrying on with normal life.
Several attempts have been made to provide solutions to the problems above. For example, WO2007044451, GB2264627, GB2425706 and US2010/0311514 describe various solutions. However, most of these documents use mechanical metal joints, bearings and/or pivots for facilitating rotations of a shoe. Such mechanical metal components add a significant amount of weight to the shoe. These components can also be dangerous in a situation if they were to come through from the sole to the main body of the shoe. Further, in the prior art, the rotation mechanism needs to be integrated with the shoe and hence it has to be made at the same time of manufacturing as the shoe. This reduces flexibility and increases manufacturing costs. The mechanical metal rotation mechanism also does not adequately reduce torque through the front end portion of the shoe.
It is an aim of the present invention to address the problems discussed above.